“Geography, in short, governs the possible, not the actual. History is not a simple function of habitat, nor culture of climate;

 neither mistral nor monsoon determines morality, nor soil society.” - Robert Blerstedt.

I agree with this statement by the sociologist Robert Blerstedt, however in writing of the conditions on Werona I’d like to amplify it with an insight by the historian Arnold Toynbee: “Sometimes there comes a point where the severity of challenge is no longer stimulating but overwhelming.”

I believe that in the story of the Frazer family on Werona (1924 - 1971), the role played by geography and climate was far from insignificant. The individual  life stories were played out in a very remote location, throughout decades when the climate was particularly harsh. The content of this page is an attempt to give some understanding of Werona’s physical environment to those who may never experience it.

Even when extreme events such as fires and dust storms were not in progress, or had not even recently occurred, the possibility of their reoccurrence was always with us. In the early 1950s, prior to my parents marriage, a tractor was caught while fighting a bushfire on a property just south of Werona. The driver narrowly escaped the blaze by jumping off and running to a nearby truck. The seared metal chassis was brought back to Werona and left under mulga trees that were less than a suburban block away from the shearing shed. Although he was not on the tractor, Dad always spoke of the event with subdued tones, saying “It was a very close call.” The black form of that old tractor was always a visible sign to us of the destructive potential of the weather. 

In sharp contrast, in July 1956 Werona experienced torrential rains. My mother was at the time almost due to deliver her second child. To ensure that she got to the Hospital she was taken over the flooded gully near Lake Eliza on a raft made of empty petrol drums.